


Ash, Smoke, Fire

by greedy_dancer



Category: The Binding - Bridget Collins
Genre: Amnesia, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:13:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21840727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greedy_dancer/pseuds/greedy_dancer
Summary: As Lucian was supporting Emmett down the steps of yet another charlatan’s practice, the nurse ran out after them.“There’s nothing the doctor can do for him,” she said, throwing a furtive glance towards the doctor’s front door.“He made that clear, thank you,” Lucian snapped. The pity in her eyes grated like nails on chalkboard.“No, you don’t understand: no doctor can,” she insisted. “Don’t you see? This is not an illness of the body.”“Pardon?” he asked by reflex, even though deep down he already knew what she was going to say. Of course.Of course, he should have known.“It’s a binder he needs.”
Relationships: Lucian Darnay/Emmett Farmer
Comments: 18
Kudos: 61
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Ash, Smoke, Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [youjik33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youjik33/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Yujik33! You said you wanted Lucian and Emmett together, but didn't mind angst along the way... I hope you will enjoy this story! :)
> 
> For (more or less spoilery) content notes, see End Notes. 
> 
> Thanks to were_duck for betaing, to ifonlyella, E. and fuluoliang for script-doctoring, to goingmissing for the cheerleading, to jeyhawk and helcinda for the horse-riding consult and to everyone who encouraged and reassured me through my first Yuletide!

It took months for Lucian to realize something was wrong.

He’d been too distracted, at first, with the elation of getting away, _running_ away, and with Emmett! Emmett, whom he knew, and who knew him, and whom he loved, and who was taking him away, away from his father and his wedding and the life of grey desperation Lucian had resigned himself to, before.

It was all Lucian could do to keep his hands off Emmett in those first few weeks, to keep his distance long enough to maintain their pretence—an upstanding young man travelling on business with his secretary, Lucian’s old stratagem come true after all—and if it did not convince, Lucian still looked wealthy enough then for inn-keepers to turn a blind eye.

Lucian sold his fine Esperand suit, his sterling silver cufflinks and his fob watch, and bought sensible clothes, sturdy boots and a warm wool coat.

He gave what remained to Emmett, to add to his take from pawning Seredith’s possessions. In Castleford, it would barely have lasted Lucian a fortnight, but by the way Emmett looked at him, you would have thought he had never seen so much money in his life. Indeed, they eked it out for much longer than Lucian had thought possible, thanks entirely to Emmett’s careful bookkeeping.

(“I will deal with the money from now on,” Emmett said, the first time Lucian came back from the market with, he had thought, a shrewd bargain on two days’ provisions. He shook his head fondly. “You might think you look like one of us, but they saw you coming, Mr. Darnay.”)

There were still cold sharp spikes piercing Lucian’s bubble of relief.

He saw his father’s face in the crowds and dreaded dark streets and unlit corners. How many times did he look over his shoulder and think he had seen Acre, and felt ice in his bones when walking down a narrow street? Would his father have both their throats slit, or just Emmett’s? How much of his memory would remain, when he woke up?

They made their way to Newton and then Lucian pushed them further, through Blackford, Applegrove and Mossley. They travelled ceaselessly for close to a month.

But against all odds, shadows remained shadows.

“Where are we going?” Emmett asked one day, his face pressed against the train car’s window. “How much further?”

“As far as we can,” Lucian answered. “Have you ever seen the ocean?”

Emmett shook his head, and then laughed. He knocked Lucian’s foot with his.

The next morning, Lucian woke up with his face tucked under Emmett’s arm, and realized that the knot in his stomach had gone. For the first time he could remember, he was not afraid.

Day after day, he had started trusting that maybe he would get away with it after all. Maybe, for the first time in his life, he would get to build something for himself, and keep it.

**

Port-Saint-Peter was beautiful, and Emmett’s eyes when he first saw the water would remain engraved in Lucian’s mind forever.

But it was as if the sea air sobered them both.

Suddenly, Emmett seemed restless, discontent. He left their room for hours on end, going for walks along the rocky shore.

They started arguing. Lucian meant to keep travelling, maybe even find a fishing boat that would take them overseas. Emmett wanted to stop, find a place to stay; get some work, start over.

“I can’t stand being idle, Lucian. I’m not like you.”

“So what, you want to start binding again? After everything that happened?” Lucian shot back, voice cold despite his burning face.

“What did you think we would do once the money ran out? Will you become a fisherman? A steelworker? A miner, perhaps? What was your plan?”

Lucian realized, shamefully, that he didn’t really have one.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “There is work I could do. I’m educated.” He could be a tutor, perhaps. Or a clerk.

“Heavens, how lucky for us. Will you write to your father for a reference?”

“Don’t be cruel, it doesn’t suit you.”

“I forgot the working class doesn’t have the wit for cruelty; that’s your kind.”

Later, Lucian came back to their small room, enough liquor in him to dull the anger behind his temples and the ache in his heart, but not enough to leave him indifferent when Emmett reached for him, apology in his hands and his mouth.

After, when they were both spent, Emmett lay next to Lucian, playing with the ring around his neck, and whispered: “Sometimes it seems like binding is the only work I could do anymore, around these parts.”

They had both seen the crowds of paupers around the workhouses, the lines in front of the binderies in every town they crossed. Desperation was good for one kind of business, at least.

“I’m a binder, Lucian. It’s who I am, I know it now, just like I know I’m yours. If I can help people, then I have to do it.”

Lucian felt Emmett turn to look at him. He kept his face carefully blank.

Emmett sighed and drew closer, touching his lips to Lucian’s shoulder. “We don’t have to stop just yet.”

Lucian knew, deep down, that they couldn’t keep running forever. They had to come back to reality, and figure out a way to survive; they had to carve out a new place in the world.

He could see now that it would be hard, but with his new-found hope, he knew it would be worth it because they would do it together, he and Emmett; Emmett, who knew Lucian better than anyone in the world, and loved him still, and let Lucian love him too.

**

They made do for a few more weeks, but inevitably, the last of their money ran out and no amount of bargaining or charm would keep them fed or warm.

They made their way back inland, staying away from cities. Winter had been rough for some in the countryside, they’d heard, and some farms found themselves short-handed. They managed a few weeks walking from farm to farm, doing odd jobs and small repairs in exchange for supper and a night in a barn. Emmett did most of the work, but Lucian remembered a few tricks from that summer at the Farmers’.

But Emmett had been right: there wouldn’t be real, steady work in the countryside before harvest season, and that was still months away.

They both got leaner.

In the end, it took Lucian three sleepless, stormy nights spent shivering in a derelict shepherd's hut before he gave in, and they headed back for the nearest real town.

Emmett offered his services to a bindery’s overburdened workshop, and they found a tiny, drafty room in a boarding house at the outskirts of town, where Lucian did the accounts in trade for a discount on the weekly rate. He was fairly sure the place doubled as a brothel.

It was hard to see Emmett leave each day and know that he was going to work in one of those places, but at least he wasn’t binding himself. To Lucian’s disgust, he found his conscience more at ease with the compromise with each day that his own services were declined around town. Of course, he didn’t look anything like a tutor these days, he supposed.

“Binding can be a noble thing,” Emmett insisted one evening as he undressed. “It doesn’t have to be… what it is here. It can help people, save them, even.”

“But not in a place like this,” Lucian countered.

“No, not like this,” Emmett agreed. “But what Seredith did was nothing like what happens in these towns. Binding shouldn’t be about sweeping away the perversions of rich men. She was kind, and honourable. I despised books, Lucian, as much as anyone, but she made me see how different it could be. I thought maybe if I could be like her...”

There was a wistfulness in Emmett’s voice when he talked about his old master that sat uneasy with Lucian. As pure as Seredith’s intentions might have been, her part in their lives had still been sinister.

And, if what Emmett had told Lucian about Seredith and de Havilland was true, being a principled binder was what had gotten her killed.

“I wonder what’s left of the house now,” Emmett mused aloud, not for the first time. “There were tools left in the workshop, some stores in the kitchen when we went back for your book, weren’t there? De Havilland didn’t get everything—“

He sat down abruptly on the bed closest to him, head in his hands.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I felt dizzy,” Emmett said, muffled. “I’m alright now.”

“You’re clearly not—Heavens, Emmett, you’re burning up!”

Emmett’s skin was unnaturally warm, and yet he was shivering.

“How long have you felt like this?”

“It’s nothing, Lucian. Just a cold. I’ll be better by tomorrow, I promise.”

Lucian fought the rising panic. If this was a flu, and Emmett had to stop working for days, how long could they still pay for their room, and for food? Could they even afford to send for a doctor?

There were two things Lucian had held on to from his life before—an antique cigarette case that had belonged to his grandfather, and a silver medal his mother gave him the day he left for school. He had thought often of pawning them, feeling guilty every time Emmett mentioned their dwindling resources. He would, in a true emergency, he thought.

But the next morning, true to his word, Emmett was fine again.

“I told you it would be gone by morning.”

A terrible suspicion crept over Lucian. “Has this happened before?”

Emmett wouldn’t look him in the eyes, which was as good as an answer.

“Heavens, Emmett, for how long?”

“It doesn’t matter. It comes and goes, and I always feel better after a few hours. Please, don’t make a fuss.”

 _You have no idea what a fuss I would make, if you let me_ , Lucian thought.

“Don’t hide things from me,” he said. “Don’t lie to me, Emmett. I couldn’t take that, not from you.”

Emmett’s lips were soft and warm, and if Lucian clung to him a little too tightly, Emmett didn’t complain.

**

True to his word, Emmett mentioned his next feverish spell to Lucian. And then the next. And the next. And the next.

“This can’t be normal, Emmett,” Lucian argued, for what felt like the hundredth time.

Emmett shifted restlessly next to him, kicking the covers off of himself, even though the air was freezing in their shabby little room.

He got up from his chair by Emmett’s bedside to dip a torn piece of bedsheet into the water jug, using it to wipe Emmett’s brow, taking in his chapped lips and sunken eyes.

The fever seemed different this time. Emmett had come back from the market soaked with sweat, barely able to put down his armful of bread and apples before his knees gave out and he stumbled to the ground at Lucian’s feet.

Lucian had half-carried, half-dragged him to the bed. In the morning, the fever was still there. It had been a full day already and it showed no signs of abating.

Emmett could barely hold his own head up long enough to drink, so Lucian helped him clumsily. Emmett swallowed a few sips of water and fell back to the bed with a moan, eyes rolling up into his skull.

“This is it, I’m sending for a doctor,” Lucian decided, but Emmett grabbed him before he could leave his side.

“Stay,” he rasped. “Please. It’s getting better now, I can feel it. Don’t leave.”

Lucian obeyed, cursing his weakness.

It took another day for the fever to dissipate completely, leaving Emmett weak and sullen.

“Next time, a doctor, Emmett. This can’t be normal.”

Emmett rolled his eyes, stubborn as a mule even in his diminished state. “I don’t need a doctor. And anyway, we need the money.”

If Lucian had kept his resolve then, or even the time after, or the next, would things have been different? If he had defied Emmett’s iron will and risked his anger, if he’d been more resourceful, or a better liar, or less of a coward, would he be in such desperate straits now?

**

Finally, after a particularly frightening spell, Lucian sold his mementos, swallowing against the tightness in his throat, and dragged Emmett on a tour of the few medical practices in town.

Gallingly, it turned out that Emmett was right: there was nothing any doctor seemed to be able to do about his condition.

“There is nothing wrong with him,” the first one said.

The second called Emmett “a picture of health!” and clapped his shoulder, making him stumble.

 _He looked like a dying man not two days ago,_ Lucian wanted to hold the man by the lapels and shake him, _and at this rates he will again within a few days._

The fevers came hard and fast together now, barely a few days’ respite for Emmett to recuperate in between spells. He was losing weight, and sleeping most of the day, even when his temperature was down. During the worst of it, he had started calling out for his Ma, for Alta, for Lucian, even when Lucian was right there, holding his hand and talking to him. He had felt as helpless and useless as he ever had in his old life.

As he was supporting Emmett down the steps of yet another charlatan’s practice, the nurse ran out after them.

“There’s nothing the doctor can do for your brother,” she said, throwing a furtive glance towards the doctor’s front door.

“He made that clear, thank you,” Lucian snapped. The pity in her eyes grated like nails on chalkboard.

“No, you don’t understand: no doctor can,” she insisted. “Don’t you see? This is not an illness of the body.”

“Pardon?” he asked by reflex, even though deep down he already knew what she was going to say. Of course.

Of course, he should have known.

“It’s a binder he needs.”

**

Lucian struggled to keep his stomach steady as he made an appointment at the bindery Emmett had worked at, and managed to take a barely-conscious Emmett there the next day.

Then, once the pretentious fop who called himself a binder admitted there was nothing he could do, barring easing Lucian’s mind if he decided to leave Emmett at the gates of the workhouse, he knocked on the doors of every other bindery with a plaque, and then a few without.

Finally, as Lucian was wondering how many more days he could keep both of them alive through will and desperation alone, he was told about an old crone, somewhere in the foothills. She was a witch, he was told, who knew everything others had forgotten about the magic of memories.

**

Two days later, Lucian stumbled up the dirt path to the binder’s front door, Emmett hanging off of his arm, weak as a newborn.

A woman was bent over a vegetable patch.

“Who are you?” she demanded, startled. Lucian had expected someone stern and intimidating, like Seredith had been, but she seemed younger and looked more like a frazzled governess than a witch.

Lucian pictured what they must have looked like to her—a pair of bedraggled boys in stained clothes, probably smelling like the stable they’d slept in the day before. The circles around Lucian’s eyes looked almost as dark these days as Emmett’s, and his hands were blistered from the half day’s work he’d done, cutting down a mountain of logs for a widow for some food and a roof over their heads.

A spark of shame ran through him, for how low he had fallen, but then Emmett stumbled and Lucian remembered he would have crawled through a sewer in front of all the country’s Magistrates if it would help Emmett in the least.

“We need help, please,” he gritted out, and then Emmett’s legs gave out for good and he fell to his knees in the dirt.

“Oh,” she said, the second she lay a hand on Emmett’s arm to help him up. “You better bring him in.”

**

Lucian made himself stand still, tucked away in a corner of her cramped kitchen, trying to focus on quieting his breath while she cooed and fussed over Emmett, who she’d laid down onto a wooden bench with surprising strength, and who was slowing coming back to himself.

“Haven’t seen anything like this since the Crusades, of course,” the binder mumbled. She had not bothered to introduce herself, although she had barely stopped talking since their arrival. “So rare for books to burn, these days, wouldn’t you say? Well, until recently, of course. A real rash of bindery fires, I hear. Lots of very unhappy people!”

Lucian’s eyes searched for Emmett’s, but Emmett’s head was lolling about on the bench. If he’d heard her, he didn’t say anything. Neither did Lucian.

“These are more ‘civilized’ times,” she continued, as if to herself, as she dashed about, opening and closing cabinets, dipping a cloth into the stone basin, gathering a bottle and cups from a shelf. “Or so they say. They put books in safes now, fancy safes in big great banks. Haven’t seen them, of course, but I know! I know what books have come to mean. They would no sooner tear a page out than tear one of their banknotes in half.”

She brought the cloth to Emmett and placed it on his forehead, clucking a little. “Here you are, love,” she said.

“What is wrong with him?” Lucian knew he sounded desperate and found that he did not care.

She looked at him, surprised. Her eyes were kind.

“Unbinding sickness,” she said. Her eyes shot to Emmett, then to Lucian and back again, puzzlement clear on her face. “What else could it be? Did your master teach you nothing?”

She poured something dark and thick from the small bottle into two cups. She handed Lucian one and kept the other.

“I’m Enga, by the way.”

“Charmed,” Lucian replied automatically. He didn’t volunteer their names, and she didn’t ask.

The cup was full of some kind of liquor, strong enough to make his eyes water a little. He made himself wait until Enga had taken a sip before draining his in one gulp, welcoming the burn. He had been craving it again, since Emmett had fallen ill.

“That’s right, love, you drink up now. Heavens know you will need it!”

**

When Emmett felt a little stronger, Enga helped him into her parlour and laid him out onto her settee.

“Sit down,” she said, and disappeared again for a minute. Lucian sat on the edge of an overstuffed chair.

She came back with a pillow and blanket, which she arranged around Emmett, tugging until only his head was visible. Lucian felt too warm, but Emmett gathered the covers around himself even more tightly, as if the room were freezing.

She left the room twice more, first to fetch two plates of bread slathered in butter—“Eat, before you both faint or fade away!”—and finally, the bottle from before and a cup for each of them.

Lucian didn’t intend to eat, but once he had picked at a few crumbs on his plate, he found he was ravenous.

“My master—she died before my apprenticeship was over,” Emmett said, putting his own plate down on a small table. He had not touched the food at all.

“Ah,” Enga said, sitting on the last chair. She took a sip from her cup. “And she was the one who did your binding, I imagine? Your old master?”

Emmett nodded.

“And she was a good binder. Honourable? She wouldn’t have—”

“She would never—“ Emmett started.

Lucian cut him off. “Wait. She wouldn’t have done what?”

“Oh, you know!” Her hand fluttered about her face as she talked, as if she were chasing off flies. “She might have kept a page aside, for herself! To sell, perhaps. I’ve heard of cases like that, even with the older generation; times are tough for binders, even those with principles, and Heaven knows there are enough temptations!”

Emmett’s eyebrows creased. “She would never... Everything Seredith did was to take care of books, to protect them.” He trailed off, then added, “We nearly burnt for it, once.”

“Hold on. Seredith, you say?” Enga looked astonished. She peered at Emmett intently, as if seeing him for the first time.

“Ah yes, I see it now. Well, that does change things. Of course, Seredith would never have let harm come to one of her books.”

“I think that’s why she died,” Emmett said, sounding gruff, like he often did when he thought back to her passing. Lucian’s own throat tightened in sympathy. “She wouldn’t give up the key to her vault.”

“Yes, that does sound like Seredith, the stubborn old goat! They don’t make them like her anymore, and more’s the pity!”

She leant back into her chair, raised her cup in the air silently and drained it. Then she poured more liquor for Lucian and herself—Emmett’s cup had sat untouched, same as his plate—and the two of them drank in silence for a while.

It was almost comfortable, Lucian thought—or maybe it was the alcohol spreading in his veins. But he was warm, and fed, and Emmett looked as if a little colour was coming back to his cheeks.

Talking about binding with Emmett usually made Lucian uneasy, but there was something soothing, almost, about listening to Emmett discuss the trade with another binder. It took a moment for Lucian to identify how he was feeling. It was pride.

Looking at this woman, thinking back to his own dealings with Seredith, he could see the common thread and follow it to what Emmett would have become, had he been able to finish his apprenticeship; a real binder, someone who helped people.

Of course he would have been nothing like the parasitic bottom-feeders in town. Lucian regretted suggesting he ever could have.

But if Emmett had finished studying under Seredith, where would he be now? And what would have become of Lucian? He couldn’t imagine a life without Emmett anymore.

That thought sent ice through his veins, piercing through the comfortable warmth. He cleared his throat.

“The unbinding sickness?” he prompted. “What can you tell us about it?”

“Ah, yes, we got a little distracted, didn’t we? Well, in truth,” she sighed, “there’s not much to say about unbinding sickness. It comes when an unbinding didn’t take, one way or another; in regular folk, memories start getting jumbled up, and pretty soon they begin unravelling.”

“Regular folk? What do you mean?” Lucian asked.

“And for binders?” Emmett asked, at the same time.

“Well… Those who have the gift can fight it, sometimes. You’re having fevers, I suppose? That must be why you’re here, looking like death warmed over.”

Emmett nodded.

“They’re almost constant, now,” Lucian added.

“Yes, you see, the body is fighting the mind,” Enga confirmed. “It can keep the sickness at bay for a time, but let it go on too long and it will burn itself down trying. How long have they been going on?”

“A month?” Lucian threw Emmett a sidelong glance. “I think.”

“Six weeks,” Emmett ducked his head. “Maybe eight.”

The binder let out a low whistle between her teeth. “Well, then, consider it a miracle you’re still walking and talking! Most of the cases I have heard about were over and done with in a month at the most. You have to let go, love, or any day now, your brain will boil itself to a soup.”

Lucian did his best to avoid thinking about what she had just said. “What do you mean, ‘let go?’”

“He’s fighting to keep his memories together; that’s what is causing his fever and making him so weak. But if he lets the sickness take hold, the fevers will stop, and his body, at least, will survive.”

“But I’ll lose my memories. Again.” Emmett didn’t look surprised, and that, more than the news itself, felt like a knife twisting in Lucian’s chest.

Enga nodded.

“And this time there is no book to burn that will bring them back.” Emmett looked at Lucian squarely.

“But if you don’t, you’ll—” Lucian looked away from him and at Enga instead. “He’ll die, won’t he?”

“Oh, love, I wish I could tell you otherwise, believe me. But I’m afraid you are right.”

Emmett was shaking his head slowly, eyes closed.

She stood up abruptly. “I’ll give you lads some time to talk, shall I? Maybe you would like some tea?” She gathered the dishes and left the room.

Emmett’s eyes were still closed, but his breath was coming hard and fast.

“This is madness,” Lucian said. “Emmett, you have to—We found each other once before, it will happen again! I will make sure of it. You have to listen to her, you can’t keep going like this. Any day, she said. You heard her.”

Emmett’s voice was so low Lucian had to strain to hear him.

“I can’t keep getting my memories, my _life_ taken away from me,” he said. “You don’t understand.”

“I was bound, too,” Lucian protested, but Emmett raised his hand to stop him.

“It’s not the same, Lucian. Not really. You chose to be bound, but me? They would have killed Alta. And then I was sent off to be a binder; and then I followed you halfway around the country... And now this? I need my life back, Lucian. My own life, that I choose, a life I can remember. Or what’s the point?”

“Heavens, Emmett!” Lucian exploded, despite himself. “Are you really going to give up now? This is nothing, compared to—Isn’t what we have worth fighting for, just one more time?”

 _Am I not worth fighting for, now that you know me?_ Lucian wanted to throw himself at Emmett’s feet, put his face on Emmett’s knees and beg him not to leave him.

He didn’t move. “Please, Emmett. We’re only just getting started. You can’t—You can’t die now. I’ll make sure—” A sudden burst of laughter erupted out of Lucian. “These memories weren’t even that good! I’ll do it better, next time. But you have to live. If you die—it will kill me, too.”

Emmett’s face had looked so stoic, so strong until then, but it cracked open at Lucian’s words, and he hid it in his hands.

Lucian gave in then, and crossed the few feet that separated them, throwing himself to his knees in front of the settee. “Please,” he begged, garbled by his tears. “Please, I love you, you can’t leave me.”

“Ssshh,” Emmett soothed, carding his fingers through Lucian’s hair. “I’ll do it, alright? I’ll do it, Lucian, please, it’ll be alright.”

Enga’s voice behind him made him jump as she came back into the room.

“I couldn’t help but overhear, and I’m sorry if I gave you false hope but—I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood. You see, the sickness... it doesn’t stop at the unbound memories. It takes them all, one by one, until there is nothing left.”

**

Lucian stood and faced her. “What?”

“I wish I could tell you otherwise, but that is how it works. Letting go of the memories will buy you some time, but in the end, the Emmett you know will be gone.”

There was no air left in the room.

“How long?” he heard Emmett ask, as if under water.

“Your body is clearly losing its battle, and you’ve been fighting the sickness for so long… Once you let go, it may be swift. I reckon you will know by how fast the memories go.”

“No. This can’t be happening,” Lucian gasped. “There has to be something we can do! Can’t you help us?”

She shook her head. “If Seredith were alive… But what one bound, another cannot unbind.”

Lucian looked over at Emmett, sitting so still he might have been made of wax, and he knew in his heart that there was nothing he wouldn’t do to help him.

“Please,” he said. “I beg you. We can pay you, my father has money—“

“Money?” she repeated. “Oh, no, it doesn’t work that way. There’s nothing money can do about binding or unbinding. You understand, don’t you?” She turned to Emmett. He nodded slowly, face blank.

“But there must be something else! This can’t be it—the choice can’t be between watching him die fast or slow. No, it can’t be. I just can’t.”

“I know it must be hard to hear,” she started, but then Emmett asked:

“You talked about Seredith earlier, about what she might have done. Did she do something wrong?”

“Please,” Lucian pushed. “If there is anything, anything at all, that could cure him, you have to tell us.”

She sighed. “There is one thing, but it is so impossible…”

“What is it?” Lucian demanded.

“If Emmett’s book was complete when Seredith bound it, then there can only be one cause: the book must have been damaged, sometime after it was bound, and when it burnt a piece of it survived. A page was ripped or a corner tore… It would happen, during the Crusades, when books were handled roughly. Back then, they were in such a hurry to burn everything, they scattered pages every which way. There used to be stories about the unbound getting sick, going mad. Served them right, of course, if you ask me.”

“So if we found the missing piece and destroyed it… It would stop the sickness?”

She was right, Lucian thought, it would be impossible. A million dark thoughts were racing through his mind, but in their midst a small, bright mote of light was taking hold.

She nodded. “If you found it, and destroyed it in the same manner as the book was destroyed. But love, are you sure you want to spend what time he has left on this wild goose chase? You might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“If I do this, he will remember?” Lucian checked.

“There’s a chance, yes. If you’re not too late.”

“Then I’ll find it.”

**

Lucian wanted to leave immediately, but Enga made him see reason, and he had to admit he was exhausted, body and mind, and Emmett was in no state to travel again so soon, even if Lucian could have figured out a way to get them to Castleford with no money.

“It’s dark out, you won’t be getting anywhere now,” she said, and indeed, when he looked out the window, it was. “Stay, rest if you can, get ready. You can leave at dawn.”

Lucian and Enga had to help Emmett up the stairs, to a small room under the eaves, filled with boxes, stacks of papers, and a small bed to one side.

“I don’t have another one, but I wager you boys don’t mind sharing,” she said over her shoulder as she left the room, and Lucian was too exhausted to pretend to protest.

“I’ll bring you bedding, and a lamp.”

**

Lucian slept, for a time, and when he opened his eyes, Emmett was staring at him, the oil lamp casting the hollows of his face into even deeper relief.

Lucian reached for him, tracing the shape of Emmett’s lips with his thumb, his heart burning at the way Emmett leant into his touch, pushing his cheek into Lucian’s palm.

Emmett’s skin was warm, but not unnaturally so. Outside, everything was quiet; after the turmoil of the day, and the hardship ahead, it felt as if they were in the eye of the storm.

Suddenly, a thought came to Lucian, making his heart race. “My father couldn’t have pulled out a page, could he?”

“What do you mean?” Emmett asked.

“Your book. Would you have known, if my father had torn something out? If he’d… kept something important.”

The mere idea turned his stomach.

“Lucian, your father never even saw my book. Remember?”

Was that really so? Lucian searched his memory.

He remembered Emmett, coming to bind Nell; how ridiculous he’d looked in his ill-fitting suit, and yet how blinded Lucian had been by how much he wanted him, instantly, and how much he’d hated Emmett for it.

He remembered, shamefully, the way he’d spoken to Emmett, how he’d wanted to punish him—he’d told him he wanted to kill him for being a binder. Thinking of the desolate, grey months when he was bound usually made his head swim, an aftershock of confusion, but this memory made him want to vomit.

Just like he knew, Emmett nudged Lucian’s knee with his, tangling their legs together.

Lucian could still feel the smooth warmth of Emmett’s book in his hand; he could see the creamy leather of his binding, marred with dark spots, as if holes had been burnt into it and then repaired with gold.

Made more beautiful for having been mended. Had the old witch known, somehow, what the future had in store?

“Did it all really happen the same day?”

Emmett nodded. “I brought the chest of books, you went through it; then we fought over it. Remember?”

“I remember. I opened it in front of you. I wanted you to see how little I cared about them.”

And yet, even as he was sneering at Emmett and waving his book about carelessly, Lucian had wanted nothing more than to keep it for himself; to open its pages and read it, cover to cover. He hadn’t understood it, this urgency to possess that piece of Emmett.

Emmett’s voice pulled him out of the memory.

“Did I ever tell you, when I saw my book, I thought it looked damaged.” He chuckled sadly. “I guess I was right.”

“We would have known if we tore it.” That much Lucian was sure of.

“I don’t remember much, after I threw it into the fire. But you told me once you saw it burn to ashes. Was there really nothing left?”

“It doesn’t matter even if there was. Ashes are cleared once a week for the dust-men to collect, and then re-used—the dust into manure, and the rest is burnt again to make… bricks, I believe.”

“Well, that rules out your father’s house, then.”

A wave of relief washed over Lucian, making him feel weak. He hadn’t known until this moment how much he dreaded ever having to set foot in that wretched place again.

“Where was your book, before it came to my father?”

Emmett chewed on his lips. “De Havilland kept the chest in his office for a few days. Before that, it travelled with us on the coach. I helped load it on myself. No one else touched it.”

“It must have happened at the bindery, then,” Lucian said. And to say that they had been there, together. If only they had found it, the night they came for Lucian’s book. But they had been otherwise occupied. He felt himself warm at the memory of that night.

“Did I ever tell you how I found him going through the safe?“ Emmett cut into his memory, a faraway look on his face. “De Havilland, I mean.”

He shivered, and Lucian put his arm around him. He was starting to radiate heat again, a new wave of fever taking hold. The last one, Lucian hoped.

“She was in her deathbed, and there he was—looting, pillaging… There was the chest for your father, and boxes—that’s where your book went. He showed it to me, told me your name.”

So that was how Emmett had learnt Lucian’s name. Somehow it had never occurred to him to ask.

“He was filling them with books by the armful,” Emmett continued.

“Was he careless?”

“He was in no state to be careful—He was drunk. I saw some of them fall to the floor. _”_

Emmett clasped Lucian’s hand, tight enough to hurt. Lucian’s guilt over de Havilland’s death eased a fraction at the anguish in his voice.

“She was his own mother, Lucian, she was lying upstairs, alone, and he was _singing._ ”

Lucian had entertained many thoughts of killing his own father. But that was different, he supposed. Seredith must have been a decent woman for Emmett to love her so.

“So that’s where it must have happened, then. That’s where we have to go.”

Emmett nodded, and then he reached for Lucian.

**

They moved together on the narrow mattress, panting into each other’s open mouths, gripping each other too tight—how could Emmett be so strong still when he was so weak—neither of them willing or able to let go.

Emmett’s skin was so hot, and he was sweating, hair stuck to his forehead, but his eyes were focused and clear, boring into Lucian’s as Lucian shifted above him.

Lucian should have been sensible and protested when Emmett stop kissing back and pushed Lucian back onto the mattress, crawled on top, hands and mouth searching, but it had only taken a second for his body and mind to be overwhelmed by the weight of Emmett, the smell that permeated his nostrils.

It seemed like an eternity since Emmett had been well enough to want this; strong enough to fuck Lucian like this, and if it were the last time… Lucian couldn’t bear not to have it.

Still, it was only a matter of seconds before Emmett’s panting turned from excited to exhausted.

“Lie down, you reckless fool,” Lucian chided, and rolled them over until he was kneeling above Emmett, spitting in his hand to add more wetness to Emmett’s cock before guiding him back inside.

Emmett’s lips were moving restlessly now, forming words Lucian couldn’t hear over his own harsh pants and bitten off cries. Emmett threw his head back and Lucian fitted his face into the crook of his sweaty neck. He felt the vibrations of the words against his cheek, his lips. His teeth found the shoelace Emmett wore the ring on, and pulled.

“I’ll remember, Lucian, I will, I’ll remember,” Emmett was saying, over and over. Lucian’s heart clenched like a fist.

“Shh, come on, shh.” He found Emmett’s hand, laced their fingers together. “You will. Of course you will, my—sweet heart.”

The last part came unbidden, making Emmett buck under him, ripping a shout from Lucian’s throat. Emmett was so responsive to tender words, and Lucian had doled them out so stingily, preferring nicknames and playful insults to show his affection. His love. How he regretted it, now. How he wished he had called Emmett all the sweet words he knew—darling, treasure, honey, beloved—while he had the time.

“My love, my heart, you’ll remember. I promise.”

Emmett’s fingers dug harder still into Lucian’s hips. It hurt, and Lucian hoped fervently, futilely, for it never to stop, but Emmett was starting to shudder, his flushed skin reddening even further from his chest to his neck, his mouth opening to suck in more air for the final effort.

“Wait, Emmett, not yet, not yet,” Lucian pleaded, but it was too late. Emmett’s hand found Lucian’s hardness, forgotten in between their bodies. Lightning shot up Lucian’s spine. Emmett stroked him as he redoubled his efforts, and soon, oh, too soon, Lucian was losing himself, crying out into Emmett’s skin. Emmett’s whole body seized up in completion, his face a beautiful grimace, and then everything stilled again.

They lay there for a long time, their breathing slowing down, shivering as their sweat cooled.

If Lucian could have, he would have stopped time right then; he would hold Emmett like this forever, keep him safe from the world and from the cruel magic that had stolen his life once already and threatened to do it again, and this time for good.

He realized too late that the sound rising up in his throat was a sob, and it sounded out in the attic before he could stifle it.

“Lucian—” Emmett started. The gentleness in his voice was unbearable. Lucian extricated himself from his arms and scrambled to his feet, fumbling about for his clothing through blurry eyes, desperately choking back the tears.

He had spent so much of his life working to keep his feelings skin-deep, shallow, harmless; but since meeting Emmett, everything seemed amplified. If he let go now, even for one second, he feared that the tidal wave of grief and rage would engulf him and render him useless. He needed to keep his head. For Emmett.

He wiped at his thighs with a discarded cloth where Emmett’s seed was seeping out.

“Lucian,” Emmett called again, softly, and then louder when Lucian didn’t turn around. “Lucian.”

Lucian sniffed, wiping at his face, rearranging his hair, buying time. What if this was the last time he had Emmett? What if—

“Lucian, please!” The urgency in Emmett’s whispering voice made him turn around.

Emmett’s face had gone from flushed to pale, sweat beading on his brow and chest. He was burning up now. Lucian drew the covers up to his chin.

“You know what to do,” Emmett rasped.

Lucian nodded.

“I’m sorry, Lucian,” Emmett said. “I tried, you know I tried.”

“I know.”

“Here—“ he reached up, something in his hand. The shoelace, and the ring.

“No—“

“—you should have this,” he finished. “Please, take it. I don’t want to risk losing it, if I forget what it is… You have to keep it safe for me.”

The ring spun slowly on its string, one way and then the other, shining dully in the fading light. Lucian caught it. It was cold.

“Heaven and hell, don’t,” he choked out suddenly, and hated himself for his weakness, but the words poured out of him in an unstoppable torrent. “Please, don’t forget me, don’t forget me, anything but that, please, Emmett, I need you to remember me…”

He could not do this. Not without Emmett. Emmett was the strong one, the capable one; Lucian had never accomplished anything in his life, he could not do this alone, he wouldn’t—

Emmett’s burning fingers wrapped over his, closing his hand around the ring.

“You’ll save me,” he said, barely a sound. “It’s your turn, Mr Darnay.”

Then his eyes rolled back into his skull and he whispered urgently for a few moments—Lucian could only make out a few words here and there; his own name, and Seredith’s, and nonsensical pleas about burning hay.

It was only when his body went limp and he fell silent that Lucian finally let the shameful tears fall. Ugly choking sobs wracked him for what felt like forever, and then he succumbed to unconsciousness, still clinging to Emmett’s chest.

**

Something moved. Lucian woke with a start. He had slipped and curled up on the floor, next to the bed. He ached inside and out.

“Where the hell am I?” Emmett exclaimed, taking in his surrounding with narrowed eyes, his hair standing every which way on his head. He was clutching the sheet in front of him modestly. His skin was a healthy pink; his lips red. He looked rested, for the first time in months.

His eyes caught Lucian’s, and widened in surprise. “Darnay?”

A shadow darkened his face. “What is this place? Is Alta here?” he growled.

The cold metal of the ring burnt against Lucian’s breast. He closed his eyes and tried to keep breathing.

**

Emmett was already at the gate, impatient to be on his way back to his parents’ farm.

Up in the attic, Lucian had started telling him the lie he’d thought up, to explain why Emmett found himself alone with Lucian so far from any place he’d ever known. But as soon as he started talking, Emmett’s face had taken on the confused, faraway look Lucian remembered from trying to tell him about his binding.

The confusion seemed to make him compliant, at least, and he’d followed Lucian’s instructions and was dressed, packed and raring to go in a few minutes. (But for how long would that continue? Lucian’s mind fretted incessantly. Would Emmett try to leave him behind at the first occasion? How soon would he stop knowing Lucian altogether and call someone for help, or simply try to run away?)

Enga put a hand on Lucian’s shoulder, keeping him behind. She handed him a small bundle wrapped in cloth.

“This should last you two days,” she said. She held out a scrap of paper, folded and sealed with a drop of brown wax. “Give that to the station master, and he’ll make sure you get on a train. If he gives you any trouble, remind him that I have the book.”

Lucian’s shock must have been obvious on his face, because she rolled her eyes. “I’d never harm it, of course. But he doesn’t need to know that.”

“I’ll find a way to repay you,” Lucian started, but she waved her hand dismissively.

“Let us hope you never have reason to come back here.”

Lucian shook his head. “I gave him up once before. I won’t do it again. Even if I fail. Someone ought to remember.”

“Don’t mention it, then, and luck be with you. And lad?” she called out after him as he started to walk away. Her face was solemn again. “Hurry.”

**

Nothing Lucian said could convince Emmett to stay behind and wait for Lucian to come get him, but at least he had nodded, with that awful emptiness in his eyes, when Lucian had assured him they couldn’t barge straight in and had to knock.

And so here they stood, the smells of the Farmers’ yard in the summer so familiar to Lucian that he could have been convinced he had slipped back in time. But while being at the farm had once seemed exotic and thrilling, being back now made the bile rise in his throat.

He thought of the bitter tears Emmett would shed as he told Lucian of the way his parents tried to convince him to get bound, once they had found them out; of the disgust and disappointment in their eyes, where there had been love and pride not two days before.

This was the last place Emmett would have wanted to be, if he were still fully himself, and yet there had been a sparkle in his eye and a skip in his step as soon as the familiar outbuildings had come into view.

Lucian tried to edge in front of Emmett, to shield him from whoever would open the door. Time seemed to stretch unbearably as they waited.

Finally, a woman appeared, wiping her floury hands on her apron—Alta, Lucian’s mind supplied, by logical deduction rather than true recognition, so startling was the change since he last saw her.

She had spit at him, then, while Emmett screamed himself hoarse up in his room, in the throes of binder-bound fever.

Lucian felt his face heat. There was a second’s stillness as she looked at him, her own cheeks flushing pink.

Then she looked past him and her face blanched. She stumbled forward. “Emmett?”

“Alta—“ Lucian said, but Emmett was already shouldering past him.

“Alta! Look at you!” he exclaimed. “When did you get so…” He gestured at her, seemingly at a loss for words to describe her transformation. “I was only gone for—“

He trailed off again and glanced back at Lucian, frowning slightly. Confusion travelled on his face like a cloud in the sky, then cleared, and he was smiling again as if nothing had troubled him. His head turned towards the house.

“Oh, what’s that smell? Did you make honey cakes?”

“I— Em, what— How—“ she stammered, her wide eyes darting back and forth between Emmett and Lucian.

“Please, let us in,” Lucian whispered.

She cast him a withering look.

“Don’t you touch them, they’re still cooling,” she told Emmett, as she moved aside to let him in.

Emmett laughed. “Has that ever stopped me?”

She turned on her heel without a further look at Lucian, and for a second he was sure she would slam the door behind herself and that he would never see Emmett again.

But she paused, just inside the door, and threw Lucian a disdainful look over her shoulder.

“Well? Ma and Pa will be back from the market soon, and you wouldn’t want them to find you here.”

He hurried inside.

Her face was a maelstrom of emotions as she watched Emmett shove a steaming cake in his mouth and then spit it back out into his own hand, hissing and wincing.

Then, suddenly, she made a choking sound and turned around, away from them both.

“Emmett, why don’t you go find Springles?” Lucian suggested.

“I have—homework to finish,” Emmett said, hesitant. “Don’t I? Where’s Ma?”

Neither Alta nor Lucian said anything. Emmett started back towards the door and let himself out.

“Sit down,” Lucian told Alta, when he could speak again. “There’s not much time for explanations.”

**

Lucian kept the story to its bare bones, but even through the anger and desperation, telling it made him feel like he could breathe a little easier. It had been so long since he could speak plainly.

They sat at the kitchen table, the silence broken only by the faint shouts and barks of Emmett and Springles outside, and the ticking of the clock, counting down the seconds they had left.

“Was he with you, then, all those months?” Alta asked abruptly. There was such disgust in her voice he couldn’t help flinching.

“Heavens, is that what matters to you?” he spat. “Lie if you have to, tell your parents he came back on his own. Say you found him wandering in the fields, say whatever you want; he won’t be able to tell them otherwise.”

She jumped up from her chair, sending it clattering to the floor, and started pacing about the kitchen, warming to her interrogation.

“And how did you find him? I bet you had that vile man keep track of him, so you could get your hands back on him when it suited you—”

“Acre? He’s my father’s man, not—“

“—and now that he’s useless to you, you’re trying to leave him back here and ordering me around? You’d have me hide the truth, when it’s your lies that tore my family apart in the first place?”

Lucian rose to his feet, too. He would gladly accept all the blame she wanted to lay at his feet; heavens knew there was little she could say that he did not already hold himself responsible for. But this was not the time.

“None of that matters, Alta, don’t you understand? Not now,” he tried. “You have to convince them to let him stay, one way or another. I would keep him with me, but—He needs them. He shouldn’t have to go through this thinking the last people he remembers have abandoned him.”

Was that guilt on her face, then? He pressed on.

“Please, Alta. Even if it’s an act; you did it once before. What they hated in him—it’s gone now.” The words cut through him like blades. “I need you to take care of him, while I try to find the cure.”

She was unmoved.

“Oh, really!” she chortled. “And then what? Let us say you do find a cure, O, great Lucian Darnay, you gallant hero. What then? Do you expect to swoop back in here and have my father shake your hand? Do you think for a second we will let you take him away again?”

“Take him away? Do you think he’ll want to stay in this damned house for one moment, if he gets his memories back? The way you treated him? They sent him away, and you were relieved to see him go. Don’t think he didn’t tell me. You chose him being a binder rather than live happily as—oh, what was it you said? A filthy—“

He would have thrown her own words back in her face, but then she slammed her hands on the counter, startling him into silence.

“Stop! Please, stop,” she cried.

He did, not quite knowing why. Outside, the barking had quieted. Emmett was feeding the chickens, whistling, oblivious to everything. If he stayed, at least he would go happy, Lucian thought desperately. His nails were digging into his palms so hard that it hurt.

Behind Lucian, Alta sniffed wetly. “How did it go so wrong?” she keened, and she sounded so young again, just like she did when they first met. Lucian’s own eyes filled with tears, which he held back desperately.

“We looked for him, you know,” she said, “when his letters stopped coming. We heard that the old wi—the old binder died, and Pa went out to look for him. He never said, but I know he regretted sending him away. But the house was empty. Ma was mad with worry.”

Good, Lucian thought. Emmett had suffered such anguish at their hands; he hoped they had felt it ten-fold.

“Then we heard from the Cutters’ farm boy that the postman was saying Emmett was with a new master, up in Castleford. But there were still no letters. Pa saddled up Bailey and rode up to town. Did you know that?”

She wiped her face with the back of her hand; she picked up the upturned chair and sat back at the table, motioning for Lucian to sit down, too.

“Of course you don’t know. Pa hates going into town; he’d never go if he could avoid it, but he was gone for three days and three nights. Right during sowing season, too. When he came back—I’d never seen him like that. There had been a fire at the bindery, he said. ‘Missing, presumed dead,’ the constable told him. They’d found Emmett’s coat in the debris. Where would he have gone, without his coat, in the middle of winter?”

Twin memories flashed through Lucian’s mind—Emmett, shivering on binders’ row; Emmett, huddling in Lucian’s coat.

“We waited for a letter every day, but nothing came. We cried for months, Lucian.”

It had never occurred to Lucian to wonder whether the Farmers were looking for Emmett. He’d assumed they must be glad to be rid of him, wasn’t that what they had said? His own father had told him often enough what a relief it would have been for the whole family, if only Lucian would stop causing trouble and just disappear.

When he looked up, Alta’s eyes were searching for his.

“Of course we’ll take care of him,” she said. “He’s our blood. But Lucian, you have to understand—we mourned him. I thought Ma and Pa would die of guilt and sorrow, and they very nearly did, and now you want me to tell them he’s—alive, but we will lose him anyway? And we have to trust _you_ to stop it?”

A glint in her hands caught Lucian’s eyes. She was worrying something between her fingers.

“He saved me, Alta,” Lucian said plainly, too exhausted now for anything but the truth. “I didn’t seek him out. I’d had my own binding done, I would have never known. But he found me, and he gave me my life back, and now I have to save him or I swear I will die trying.”

The trinket escaped her then and rolled to him across the kitchen table. It was a ring, a simple band of gold with a small, dark red stone set in the middle, gleaming warm in the light. He picked it up, raised an eyebrow in her direction.

She nodded, a small, secret smile on her face. She wiped her eyes. He found his own cheeks were wet and rubbed at them, too.

He handed her the ring back; she slipped it onto her finger.

“No garland of rubies and pearls, then?”

She let out a startled, wet laugh, as if she hadn’t expected him to remember.

“I was a little idiot. This is real. I don’t need rubies or pearls.”

Lucian reached for the shoelace inside his collar, tugging until his ring—Emmett’s ring—appeared.

“Emmett and I are real, too. He just doesn’t remember it right now.”

There was a long, heavy silence, and he met her gaze squarely. She peered into his face intently, and then she clapped her hands together, startling him.

“Alright,” she said, clearing her throat. “Enough dawdling. What do you need?”

Lucian tried to gather his thoughts. The sun was high in the sky still, but it would get dark sooner than would suit him.

“Can you help me get to the old binder’s house? And with something to light a fire?”

“Bailey’s gone, Ma and Pa took the cart into the village,” she said regretfully. “But I can tell you where the Cutters keep their horse.”

Lucian nodded. Alta followed him to the door, placing an oil lamp and some matches into a cloth sack.

“Do you want me to get Em? So you can—”

The end of her sentence was lost to Lucian as a wave of terror washed over him. He shook his head frantically.

“Fuck, Alta. No, please, I can’t—I. If I see him and he doesn’t know who I am—”

Her concerned gaze was so like Emmett’s despite her clear eyes, that for a terrible second Lucian thought he might reach for her and fall crying into her arms.

“No need for goodbyes anyway, right?,” she said. “You’ll see him soon enough.”

He nodded, grateful for the forced cheer in her voice.

“Now go! On your right, through the woods!”

**

Lucian clung to the makeshift lead of his stolen horse as it thundered down the path to the old bindery. She was a massive draught horse, nothing like the elegant mares he’d ridden at school, so tall and wide that he had trouble staying on—it had been years since he had ridden bareback, and while she had let him lead her out of her paddock, she had been reluctant to get going at first.

Finally, with all his skill and copious cursing, he had succeeded in coaxing her from a placid walk into a painful trot, and then a great rolling gallop.

Every one of his muscles ached and the lamp in its sack was knocking into his back, but he would have taken any amount of pain if they could have gone faster still.

After a while, the fresh air of the fields gave way to a musty, marshy smell, an eerie quiet falling around him as trees became scarcer and the landscape opened up.

The horse came to a sudden halt just as the thatched roof of the bindery came into view, and nothing Lucian could do would make her start again. He slid down, patting her on the rump for her service, and took off at a run without a further thought. She’d either be here when he finished, or she would have found her way back home; he had infinitely more important matters to worry about.

His legs felt like they would give out at any moment, and his lungs were on fire by the time he reached the door—or what had been the door, once, and was now a dark gaping maw.

Lucian saw now what he’d missed from the distance—the house, which had been in a mild state of neglect when he and Emmett had visited, had suffered serious damage since.

He stepped over the broken fragments of the door and walked inside. Glass crunched under his feet. The floorboards creaked as he moved through the rooms.

In the parlour, the furniture had been tipped over; the settee’s entrails spilt all over the floor. A small animal scuttled away as he walked, making him jump. In the workshop, he startled two birds, or maybe bats, which flapped around the room before finding their way out through a broken window. The smell of damp was everywhere.

On the way, he had tried to recall everything he remembered and everything Emmett had ever told him about the bindery, planning his path in his mind—the way to the workshop, the stove with its animal tiles, the two doors on either side.

The left one led to the stairs down to the storeroom and the vault, where Seredith had worked and kept her books and where de Havilland had stolen them. Where Emmett and Lucian had come, searching for Lucian’s book. Where Emmett’s book must have been damaged.

Lucian stopped before going down the dark stairs, kneeling in the debris to light the oil lamp. Dusk was falling around him. The workshop looked fantastical, strange objects scattered everywhere, casting stranger shadows once the flame grew.

Memories superimposed themselves onto reality. He had stood in this room with Emmett and reached for him. He had stood in this room and thought about slicing his wrists. He had stood in this room and listened to Emmett bravely ask him to stay, to leave his wedding and just—stay. He had stood in this room, and fled.

He felt as if he were in a dream—it seemed like a miracle to have made back here, and with hope for Emmett still.

As he took the first steps down the stairs, Lucian’s runaway thoughts called up a vision of what he would find. The room had been cluttered, that winter. Maybe whichever country vandal had come here since would have taken some of it away. There would be a few objects left, scattered here and there, and in the centre, a small fragment of a page. Lucian would pick it up, and read it, and then burn it there and then, immediately, he would _know._ Emmett would be saved.

Or perhaps, his traitorous mind supplied, the room would be truly and simply empty, and in that second, Lucian would know he had failed, and everything would just—stop.

He was so exhausted. Even breathing in the thickening air was a struggle.

There was a sharp angle in the stairs to the storeroom, blocking his view of the space below, but once he turned the corner and raised his lamp, the spectacle almost stopped his heart in his chest.

The room was smaller than he remembered. The vault was open, same as he and Emmett had left it.

Everywhere Lucian looked was pure chaos.

There were upturned tables; at least a dozen boxes and as many chests lying about, their contents half spilt out; there were buckets and tools and pieces of leather and broken bottles, which must have contained inks before someone had hurled them at the walls, if the colourful splashes there were any indication.

And everywhere Lucian set his eyes, there was paper.

There were pieces of paper in various sizes and states lying on every surface; entire pages and balled up wads and some torn into minuscule pieces, scattered about like flower petals. There was white paper and paper of every colour in the rainbow, some feathered into vivid patterns, some discoloured by ink splashes and mildew.

Lucian staggered down the last few steps, the hollow feeling that gnawed at the pit of his stomach spreading to his chest.

There was a splash when he reached the bottom, and he realized the origin of the smell—the ground was covered in two inches of foul, stagnant water, still more paper floating at the surface in various stages of decomposition.

If the torn fragment was indeed in this room—how would Lucian ever find it? It would take him hours, days even, to go through the mountain of clutter; and then there were all the pieces floating in the inky pool.

Enga had been adamant—Emmett’s book had burnt; only fire would reverse the sickness. If Emmett’s piece wouldn’t burn, or if it had already dissolved into the water…

Lucian put the lamp down on the step, trying to keep control of himself as his breath started hitching and his vision blurred.

Around him, the piles seemed to grow, rising towards the low ceiling until they towered over him, threatening to crash around his head and sink him to the bottom of an ocean of paper. His ears filled with the rushing of waves. He clutched at his chest, tearing at the neck of his shirt, gasping desperately for air.

Suddenly, a glimmer caught his eyes. —METT FARM—, the gold letters spelled, slightly crooked on a thin, discarded piece of leather.

Emmett. Emmett had made these letters. A vision came to Lucian, or maybe a memory, of Emmett in Seredith’s workshop, bent over his work, hair falling into his eyes, oblivious as Lucian stared at him from outside. How careful he had been. How calm he had looked, and how beautiful.

Emmett, who had tried to fight for them, and lost. Who had been sent to Seredith because of Lucian, and had had to give up everything he knew, and yet had found a way to rebuild, in this house; who had made a place for himself, in the workshop, and found a form of happiness.

Lucian wiped his eyes and got to work.

He clambered back up the stairs and started a fire in the stove, filling it with blank paper and broken pieces of furniture. Then he went back to the storeroom.

He hung his lamp to a nail sticking out of the wall and started with the corner nearest to the stairs.

He emptied the upturned boxes, running his hand along every wall, every edge, inside and out, to dislodge any piece of paper that could have been stuck there, and set them all in a row on the stairs.

He picked up the broken glass and put it gingerly in the first box. He filled the second and third with every tool and object within reach.

Then, he started on the paper. Coloured paper went into its own box—Emmett’s book had had white pages, that much he was sure of. The rest he tried to sort, blank in one box, used in another. At first, he examined every fragment that had—or could have had—any writing on it, trying to decipher its meaning, but soon he understood that it was futile. The chances that he would recognize Emmett’s piece if he found it were so slim, he would just have to burn each page.

His hands grew cold, stained by the leathers and inks. He kept going, and going, and going.

Lucian worked steadily in the flickering light of the lamp. His breathing slowed and his mind cleared, no other thought beside the task in front of him.

After some time, he squelched back up the stairs—the water had soaked into his shoes and up the legs of his pants by now. Outside, the moon shone brightly, high in the sky.

He emptied his first harvest into the stove, the flames turning blue-green with chemicals, and then he went back downstairs and started on another pile.

He worked ceaselessly, pushing every stray thought from his mind. His world narrowed to the piles and the boxes, the stairs and the stove; up and down, up and down.

He was on his fourth trip down—or was it the fifth? Or the sixth, maybe? It was still dark outside, that was all he could say—when he slipped and fell, scraping his back on the edge of the stairs and landing roughly in the water.

The shock of the cold brought him out of his meditative state, as if he were yanked back into his body after floating in the ether.

He was freezing, he realized, and his throat was dry as the desert. His hands stung when he put them in the water to push himself up—they were covered in tiny papercuts, and he was surprised to find burns, too, angry red lines on his wrists and the backs of his hands where he must have touched them to the hot stove.

He looked around, taking in his progress as if for the first time, and was appalled to see how much was left to do.

Heavens. If Emmett’s missing piece really was here, somewhere—it might still take Lucian days to get to it. How many of Emmett’s memories had gone since Lucian had been here? How much of him was left?

Lucian’s head swam. His empty stomach ached, his temples throbbed, and his eyes felt gritty with exhaustion.

He did not know how long he could keep going, before his body demanded rest and sustenance—he cursed himself for leaving in such a rush, without water or food. Of course, he’d hoped it would be dealt with fast; he had not expected this Sisyphean task.

Maybe he would be here forever, in this eternal night, condemned to whittling away at the same task, hoping forever for a resolution that would never come; he, too, had dared to hope for a second chance and this was his punishment now; his own personal hell.

As if on cue, he stumbled again and when he tried to catch himself on the leg of an upturned chair, it fell to the ground, bringing the entire pile of materials below it to the floor, knocking down another in the process.

It really was the perfect analogy, he thought; but then, he had always been good at poetry.

The thought made him laugh, and then he couldn’t stop laughing, and something in him came undone as his laughter gave way to an overwhelming, sick, helpless rage.

He saw himself, as if from above, kicking at anything he could reach, sending piles tumbling down into the papery swamp, stomping onto boxes until they broke into satisfying pieces. An inhuman scream filled the room, so full of pain and despair, and it was only when his throat started hurting that he knew it came from him.

He bent down and gathered up as much of the debris and mush as he could carry and stomped up the stairs. He opened the stove door and shoved his whole wet armload inside, doing his best to push it all in. The flames dimmed but didn’t die.

He ran down the stairs, cursing the whole world—de Havilland and the Farmers and his father and Seredith and Emmett; Emmett most of all, because it was his fault Lucian was in such pain now. If he’d never met Emmett, if Emmett hadn’t shown him what could be, if Emmett hadn’t made life without him seem unbearable, if Emmett weren’t _dying,_ then Lucian wouldn’t be here, now, going mad with the pain of trying to save him, of pushing through when Lucian knew, deep down—when he had always known, perhaps, that he would fail in the end.

The sun was rising. It took him a few seconds to notice the storeroom was lit only by a ray of sunlight spilling in from the stairwell. The lamp had fallen down and shattered, but rather than going out entirely in the water, it had spilt its oil and flames in a circle. Charred bits of paper still smouldered even as they floated in the murky liquid.

It could all burn, Lucian realized. All of it would burn, right here, if only he gave it a little help.

Emmett’s feverish ramblings came back to him in an instant. That was what he had whispered, back in Enga’s attic. “Burn the haystack.” Of course. That was how you found the needle. Emmett had tried to tell Lucian, but Lucian had been too distraught to understand. Whether with Emmett’s book or Lucian’s, fire had always been the answer. Lucian’s mistake had been to try and control it.

He had been such an idiot.

He clambered up the steps and ran through the house to the kitchen.

It had been ransacked, just like the rest of the house, but at the back of a shelf, he found what he had hoped for: a few dusty bottles, labeled “Mead” in someone’s neat handwriting. The corks had gone mouldy and broken when someone tried to open them, and they had been left behind.

He carried them all back to the workshop. Involuntarily, he found himself slowing down as he made his way through the rooms.

Emmett had been happy in this house, he thought as he picked up a broken stool and set it upright.

In his mind’s eye, Lucian saw the house as it had been, once; warm, clean and cared for. It had been a home, the only one Lucian had really ever been in, apart from the Farmers’.

Seredith had died here, and no matter how far Emmett had agreed to follow Lucian, Lucian knew he had hoped, secretly, that he would come back here one day and take up her mission as her rightful heir.

She had sealed their fate here, too, when she bound them. And now Lucian would make or break them both, for good this time.

“Thank you,” Lucian found himself saying out loud, hoarsely. Then: “I’m sorry.”

He walked into the workshop and down the stairs. He used one of the long, narrow tools to push the corks inside the bottles and emptied them all over the floor, mixing the alcohol into the mixture of water and paper.

If books wanted to burn, he thought, cracking a match, then let them.

Blue flames spread like wildfire the instant the match touched the paper, and in seconds, they were engulfing everything.

Fire had always fascinated Lucian, and he felt himself drawn to it, mesmerised by the way the flames slithered from wall to wall, climbing over the mounds of debris, sending sparks up in the smoky air as they devoured everything in their path.

Then something exploded, and the spell was broken—he raced up the stairs and out of the room, furious heat roaring at his back.

In the workshop, the floorboards were starting to smoulder, smoke rising between the cracks.

Lucian wanted to run out, but suddenly he couldn’t bear losing what remained of the tools of Emmett’s trade. He grabbed a wastebasket and swept a jumble of tools, papers, needles, thread and other unrecognizable objects into it. Only then did he run out, everything burning; the house, his hands, his eyes, his lungs; and fiercest of all his heart, on fire with terrible hope.

**

Lucian awoke to shouts of his name.

“I’m here,” he tried to answer, but his voice wouldn’t cooperate.

The light hurt his eyes when he opened them. He couldn’t remember much after the fire. It had been hard to breathe, and there had been thunder in his ears and water, whipping his face—a storm?

There had been just enough strength left in him to crawl to the stables for shelter before the blackness took him.

“Lucian!” someone was yelling. “Lucian, I swear!”

Lucian felt as if he had been plunged into an ocean of pure relief.

Emmett. _Emmett._

Emmett was here and he knew Lucian, and he was calling his name.

“Emmett! Here!” Lucian tried to reply, but he could only cough. His spit was black as ink.

He tried standing up—his head swam again, or maybe still. He was shaking like a leaf. He followed the voice out into the open, his legs as unsure as a young foal’s, shielding his eyes against the blinding light.

How much time had passed?

Everything around him seemed new—the light, the fresh air tinged with smoke, the green smell of the marshes underneath. He felt reborn.

“Emmett,” he tried again. “Over here.”

Suddenly he was engulfed in Emmett’s arms, pressed against him from knees to shoulders. Instantly, he forgot about his hunger, his thirst, his pain. His world narrowed down to Emmett’s body against his; Emmett’s familiar smell; his strong hands cradling Lucian’s skull and patting him all over, as if to check that he was really there.

He let Emmett take his weight, clinging to him shamelessly, ignoring the pain in his burnt hands, rubbing his face into the skin of Emmett’s throat, leaving dark streaks behind.

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been looking for you!” Emmett growled. He sounded angry, but his fingers tightened in Lucian’s hair. Lucian held him closer, making Emmett stumble backwards. He would have crawled inside Emmett’s body if he’d known how.

He tried to talk and found that he could only produce wordless, hurt noises.

“Oh, Lucian. Oh, my love,” Emmett soothed, “it's alright, you did it! I woke up and I remembered everything—it worked, you did it, you saved me.”

Then he made more low, comforting sounds that might or might not have been words—Lucian stopped being able to understand them. All he could comprehend was that Emmett was saved. They both were. It was over.

After a while, when Lucian had regained some semblance of his mental and physical balance, he forced himself to let go of Emmett. They both turned to look at the house.

The flames had burst out of the workshop’s window and door, and licked dark paths up to the thatch above, which was completely gone. The exposed, blackened frame of the roof still smoked a little.

“I’m sorry I burnt your house down,” Lucian gritted out, rough and painful.

“It was always going to burn, sooner of later,” Emmett replied with a slow shrug. “I think Seredith knew it, and I can see it too, now.” His fingers found Lucian’s and squeezed gently.

“The walls are still standing.” To Lucian’s surprise, the thought filled him with relief. The words came more easily now. “That rainstorm came just in time. I bet it could be rebuilt.”

Emmett looked at him with with something like awe, and Lucian couldn’t help it anymore: he pressed their lips together, pouring everything he had left into the kiss.

Emmett’s hands came up, leaving trails of warmth across the skin of Lucian’s face and throat, knotting in his shirt, pressing the ring into Lucian’s heart like a brand.

Lucian let the heat grow, stoked by Emmett’s lips and tongue, and it rushed through him bright and clean and joyful, consuming everything—his fear, his doubts, his grief and his rage, until there was nothing left but the knowledge that here, with Emmett, it would all spark again.

**

Epilogue

Lucian threw his sweat-soaked shirt on the ground and plunged his hands into the copper basin, splashing water on his face. The cold of the water was welcome, after another unseasonably warm afternoon on the roof.

He wasn’t complaining, of course; the longer this dry spell lasted, the more of the thatching he would get done before the stable became too cold to live in and they had to move into the house, ready or not.

In the courtyard, Emmett and Alta laughed, and then Emmett called his name.

“Lucian! Come say goodbye!”

“Are you going already, Alta?” Lucian poked his head out of the stable.

The house on the marshes was a long way away, even on the mule the Farmers had acquired that summer, and she had been here barely an hour. She had brought them two more chicks, and some of the honey cakes Emmett loved so much.

“Promise me you’ll stop making Martin give you chickens,” Lucian had heard Emmett tell her when she handed him the peeping, rustling basket.

“I didn’t ask him, he gave them to me!” she had shrugged. That was the Alta Lucian knew; wrapping men around her little finger. “Anyway, the Smiths have more than enough, and someone has to make sure you’re not starving, all the way out here.”

Lucian had tuned out the familiar bickering, and turned back to his bundle of reeds, a smile on his face.

Lucian and Emmett waved as Alta rode back down the path into the forest, and then Emmett followed Lucian inside the stable.

“Alta says Springles is having pups again,” Emmett said, as he took off his own shirt and cleaned his own face.

“Oh?”

Emmett nodded. “If there are enough, maybe Pa would give us one.”

“That would be nice,” Lucian said cautiously. The subject of Emmett’s parents was still sensitive. His Ma sometimes sent food along when Alta visited, which was more than Lucian had thought possible, but Mr Farmer did not seem ready to make any gestures of peace quite yet.

Emmett was still hurt by it, Lucian knew, even if he rarely talked about it; especially now that they had heard the news about Lucian’s own father…

“I think so,” Emmett said. “I’d feel better if you had a dog with you.” His voice came from very close behind Lucian, closer than he’d expected, and Lucian jumped a little.

He felt Emmett’s laugh against his neck, and then Emmett wrapped his arms around Lucian from behind, their bare chests pressing together. Emmett kissed the side of Lucian’s neck, thumbing at the ring Lucian still wore like he was saying hello to it, the way he always did now.

“Would the pup be big enough by then?” Lucian asked, and then he lost his train of thought, his breath rushing out when Emmett walked him to the wall, knees tucking into the hollow of Lucian’s knees, until Lucian got his meaning and braced his forearms against the stone.

“There’s still time,” Emmett said, his hands at Lucian’s belt.

A shiver ran down Lucian’s spine when Emmett’s hand wrapped around him. He loved how direct Emmett had grown, how unashamed he was about his desire, how sure he was that Lucian would respond in kind.

Emmett had never been shy, even at the beginning, when he was innocent and they hid in ruins and straw bales; but this Emmett, with his strength, his quiet confidence, was Lucian’s undoing every time.

He whined, low in his throat, and bucked into Emmett’s hand.

“Wait here,” Emmett said, and left Lucian standing there for a few seconds, just enough for the self-consciousness to start creeping in; but then he was pressed against Lucian’s back again, his hand sliding wetly on Lucian’s skin when he touched him, starting to build a rhythm.

Emmett was hard; Lucian could feel him rubbing himself against the small of his back.

“You want to fuck me, darling?” he asked.

Emmett moaned against the nape of Lucian’s neck, his hips and hand working faster.

“Do it,” Lucian coaxed. “I want you, sweetheart. Come on, please.”

It was exhilarating to be able to speak so freely, to ask so directly for what he wanted. There had been a time, he remembered, when he had thought his appetites were shameful; when his best hope for fulfillment had seemed to be a painting hanging over his joyless marriage bed and perhaps a sordid affair with married men.

How wrong he had been, he thought, and then Emmett was pushing blunt, wet fingers inside him and all rational thought was wiped from his mind.

He reached his end on his knees, leaning against Emmett’s chest, letting him support his weight, an exultant cry rising from his throat.

Emmett followed him close, hand wrapped against Lucian’s throat and his lips whispering love and filth in Lucian’s ear as he spent himself deep inside him, sending a warm echo of pleasure through Lucian’s body.

They caught their breaths and then cleaned up, ate a simple dinner and lay down on their straw mattress in the fading light. Emmett put his head on Lucian’s shoulder and was dozing within a few minutes. Late evenings and manual labour did not mix well, Lucian was re-learning.

Tomorrow, bright and early, he would walk to the Cutters’ place and finalise the tentative agreement they had hashed out at the end of the summer—some more timber for the house, maybe even some good, solid doors, for some of Lucian’s bundles of reeds and a week’s work on the Cutters’ roof.

Lucian’s bargaining skills were coming along, even Emmett agreed, and he was looking forward to the work. How did he ever fill his days, before Emmett? It was hard to remember.

That would get the house a long way to being more than an inhabitable shell, Lucian hoped, by the time Emmett came back from the Littlewater binder next summer.

After the sickness, Lucian had thought he would never again let Emmett out of his sight. When the letter had come, just a few weeks after Emmett was cured, asking if he would come stay with her for a few months and finish his apprenticeship, he had refused.

“I don’t need another master, and anyway I’m not leaving you,” Emmett had said, and Lucian had been glad.

But as Lucian found his bearings, here on the marshes, and started to understand that there could be a life for him as more than Emmett’s protective shadow, he realized it had been a mistake. No matter what he claimed, Emmett wasn’t meant to be a thatcher, or a woodcutter, or indeed a farmer. He was—he needed to be—a binder.

Then the postmaster had come with another letter, from Castleford this time, and that had sealed it.

“My father is dead.”

Lucian had stared at the solicitor's letter for a long moment, reading and re-reading it, trying to separate fact from legal jargon—a library fire; his father found dead in his locked office; his mother taking his sisters away; the house being sold. He was getting nothing, but that was no surprise. There was nothing from his past he would miss—except perhaps _William Langland._

“Are you all right?” Emmett had asked, and Lucian had laughed, and laughed, and laughed. With that threat gone, nothing could ever frighten him again.

Still, Lucian thought, thumbing Emmett’s ear, a dog would be nice—for companionship, if not security. It would get lonely, without Emmett, even if Alta had promised she would keep visiting.

Lucian’s arm was going numb, and he pulled it from under Emmett as gently as he could. Emmett stirred.

“‘S it morning?” he slurred.

“No, love,” Lucian reassured. “Go back to sleep.”

He went to turn the lamp off, but Emmett stopped him, shaking his head.

“No, wait. There was something else I wanted to tell you.”

Lucian made an encouraging noise, but Emmett didn’t say anything. He got up, bent over the bundle that Alta had brought with her and then came back to Lucian. He took Lucian’s hand.

“I want my ring back.”

A few months ago, the phrase would have sent Lucian into a panic. Today, with Emmett’s fingers laced through his, all he felt was mild confusion.

“Now? Why?”

Lucian had tried to give it back to Emmett on several occasions, but Emmett always put his hand on Lucian’s chest over the ring. “You keep it for now,” he would say, and Lucian had grown to expect its weight against his skin, a tangible reminder of their love.

“If I’m going to leave for months, I want to have it with me,” Emmett said, simply.

He turned Lucian’s hand over and deposited something in his palm. “You can have this one instead.”

Lucian looked down. It was a simple, thin band of metal, polished to a brilliant gleam. It was perfect.

“You can keep the shoelace,” Emmett said with a bright smile. “I want to wear mine on my finger.”

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: passing mention of canon suicidal ideation and canon alcohol addiction, vomiting, depiction of a panic attack, minor (canon villain) character death.


End file.
